AFGHANISTAN

Yesterday afternoon, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power marched to Twitter to proclaim: “We call on Russia to immediately cease attacks on Syrian oppo[sition and] civilians.” Along with that decree, she posted a statement from the U.S. and several of its closest authoritarian allies — including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.K. — warning Russia that civilian casualties “will only fuel more extremism and radicalization.”

Early this morning, in the Afghan city of Kunduz, the U.S. dropped bombs on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)). The airstrike killed at least nine of the hospital’s medical staff, and seriously injured dozens of patients. “Among the dead was the Afghan head of the hospital, Abdul Sattar,” reported the New York Times.

Jason Cone, MSF’s executive director, said the medical charity “condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrific bombing of its hospital in Kunduz full of staff and patients.”

Russia was outraged by US top military commander's remarks on Moscow alleged support of Taliban terrorist organization (outlawed in Russia) and expressed its indignation during recent NATO-Russia Council (NRC) meeting, Russian envoy to NATO Alexander Grushko said Friday.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I seem to recall the Russians and Taliban killing each other last time they met!

The US operation against the Taliban and al-Qaeda was supported by all countries. It’s another matter that after receiving the international approval, the United States and its NATO allies, which took over in Afghanistan, started acting rather inconsistently, to put it mildly. During their operation in Afghanistan, the terrorist threat has not been rooted out, while the drug threat has increased many times over. The drug industry prospered. There is factual evidence that some of the NATO contingents in Afghanistan turned a blind eye to the illegal drug trafficking, even if they were not directly involved in these criminal schemes.

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium.

When asked about Trump attitudes toward war, MIT professor and renowned linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky told MintPress News that the idea that he was an anti-war candidate “was based on his criticisms of the Iraq and Libya attacks (which, contrary to his lies, he supported) and his ambiguous statements about reducing tensions with Russia – a good thing, if he meant it. But his actual policies are extremely dangerous.”

“[This includes] the sharp increase in the military budget, the weakening of restrictions on drone strikes, and the wild charges about Iran,” Chomsky said, adding that what really worries those who pay attention to these issues “is his megalomania and unpredictability…we know how someone who goes berserk over minor slights might react in a moment of crisis.”

Gen. Nicholson now says he wants another 5,000 US and NATO troops, saying he believes the US needs that many to “break the stalemate” in the war. Nicholson has repeatedly labeled the conflict a “stalemate” in recent weeks, which appears to be an overestimation of the situation, with the Taliban continuing to gain ground against Afghan security forces.

The US has repeatedly run into this problem in Afghanistan, with the government’s forces unable to stand up to the Taliban by themselves, and NATO growing weary of continuing to prop them up. This has led to escalations and deescalation for years, constantly trying to save the Afghan government from outright defeat.

Nicholson argued that because 9/11 involved Afghanistan, a loss in the country would embolden terrorists globally.

Webmaster's Commentary:

General Nicholson, a word, please.

As you well know, Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11: it is the self-perpetuating lie/narrative that the US government continues to flog as its "justification" for having invaded, and continuing to occupy this country with US and NATO troops.

The staff of American USSR has learned in a book by Dr. Mohammad Daud Miraki and reported with a graphic video of deformed babies at Press TV that The United States' use of radioactive munitions in Afghanistan has destroyed the people's health and mutilated the genetic future of the country, Press TV reports.
Dr. Mohammad Daud Miraki, the author of Afghanistan After Democracy: The Untold Story Through Photographic Images, told Press TV's Kabul correspondent on Monday that the US has committed horrific crimes against the people of Afghanistan.

He said the US used depleted uranium in the country and Afghan babies were being born with severe deformities.

In a press briefing at the Pentagon today, African Command leader Gen. Thomas Waldhauser announced that the US intends to keep ground troops in Libya for the foreseeable future to support “friendly forces,” and to “degrade” the ISIS forces that remain in the country.

Waldhauser did not specify how many US troops are in Libya now, or how many will stay, but did estimate that there were less than 200 ISIS fighters left in Libya. The US had announced the end of the anti-ISIS campaign in Libya back in December, but never fully withdrew from the country.

The US forces were in Libya trying to help the “unity” government defeat ISIS in the city of Sirte. US officials repeatedly claimed the city was totally surrounded, and that no ISIS fighters would get away, though when the fighting finally ended, a substantial number of ISIS fighters did in fact get away.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Translation: this is "military-speak" for the reality that the US government is never leaving Libya because of the oil and the oil pipelines.

Officials with the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation have denied the statement from US military officials, who claimed that Russia was supposedly maintaining the Taliban movement in Afghanistan (the organisation is banned in Russia). "I've seen the influence of Russia of late, increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban," Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the head of the U.S. military's European Command and the Supreme Allied Commander for NATO said. The general did not specify what exactly Russia could be supplying to the Taliban. The head of the second Asia department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Zamir Kabulov, responded to Scaparrotti's remarks. "This is an absolutely false assertion that does not even deserve any reaction, because these statements are fabrications designed to justify the failure of the United States in the Afghan campaign. We can not find another explanation to this," Kabulov said.

In the past few months, US officials have increasingly found it convenient to blame Russia for anything that goes wrong, no matter how little credibility such an accusation has. NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, US Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, may have gone the farthest, however, saying that it was conceivable that Russia was providing unspecified “supply” to the Afghan Taliban.

Gen. Scaparrotti told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had “seen the influence of Russia of late,” and that “perhaps” this included supplies, though he neither offered any details on what sort of supplies he was accusing Russia of “perhaps” giving the Taliban, nor any evidence that anything he said was true.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Gen. Scaparrotti, a word, please; trying to blame the nearly 16 year old, utterly failed US/NATO occupation on Russia, and providing absolutely no evidence with which to support your claim, is, shall we say diplomatically, completely counter-productive.

Now the question is why heroin use has dramatically increased since 2002? Maybe the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 after the September 11th attacks under the Bush regime had something to do with it? The main-stream media (MSM) establishment mouthpiece The Washington Post admitted in 2006 that heroin production in Afghanistan “broke all records” while under U.S. occupation:

Opium production in Afghanistan, which provides more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin, broke all records in 2006, reaching a historic high despite ongoing U.S.-sponsored eradication efforts, the Bush administration reported yesterday.

In addition to a 26 percent production increase over past year — for a total of 5,644 metric tons — the amount of land under cultivation in opium poppies grew by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent

A NZ Special Air Service soldier has confirmed civilians were killed in a 2010 raid carried out by the unit and says the truth is widely known among the elite military group.

The soldier told the Herald the two people found shot dead were killed by NZSAS marksmen who believed they were acting under "Rules of Engagement" governing their actions on the battlefield.

"They have taken out two," he said.

He said the other four people killed died in a barrage of fire from United States aircraft called in by a New Zealander operating as the Joint Terminal Air Controller - the person responsible for directing air support.

The soldier said it emerged there were no combatants identified on the battlefield - as the book maintained.

Former Defence Minister Wayne Mapp has conceded civilians were killed in a 2010 Afghanistan raid.

The raid is the focus of Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson's new book, which claims six people were killed.

This is the first Government concession that civilians died in the raid.

Newshub spoke to Mapp - who was Defence Minister at the time of the attack - today.

"One of the disasters of war is these terrible things can happen," he said when asked about the deaths.

When asked if he was remorseful, he said: "In 2014 I was informed that, I saw it on TV in fact, that a 3-year-old was killed, I'm sure everyone is remorseful about that. At the time of the attack they thought they were being attacked by insurgents."

Hanif Atmar said Afghanistan highly appreciates Russia’s initiative towards regional consensus in Central Asia in order to promote partnership in various spheres. "Traditionally, Afghanistan carries out a multi-vector foreign policy and Russia is a major factor in our country’s foreign policy," he said. "Russia and Afghanistan have important common interests and our partnership is playing a major role in achieving these common goals. Our cooperation plays an important role in countering terrorism and drug trafficking, in ensuring peace and national reconciliation in our country and in developing trade-and-economic relations. Afghanistan highly appreciates your recent initiatives towards regional consensus in order to promote such partnership," Atmar added.

Afghanistan hardly got a look in during the election campaign. The decade-and-a-half-long war was mentioned only once in the three presidential debates — in the form of a passing reference by Hillary Clinton. Trump, however, might want to put down the golf clubs and start paying attention to the forgotten struggle against the Taliban, which was supposed to have formally ended in December 2014. His generals, backed by GOP hawks in Congress, want to drag it out for a few more years. Their unspoken mantra? When in doubt, double down.

Webmaster's Commentary:

These Generals, advocating for more troops in Afghanistan, need to very articulately spell out just what the hell they mean when they say “It is imperative that we see our mission through to success,”

How, after 16 long years, and all the blood and money spent, do they define "success" in Afghanistan, as there is, so far, no military metric after all this time by which this campaign, waged in a country which has long been called "the graveyard of empires", can be measured?!?

I would politely suggest to Congress to have them completely spell out how these additional troops would lead to any possible military "win", when previous troop surges have led to abject failures on the part of the NATO and US military, and with the Taliban even deeper in control of the country.

Oh, and Congress; a word, please.

Most Americans with more than one brain cell understand that the sensible thing to do is evacuate all US and NATO troops as quickly as would be safe to do, and negotiate with whatever government is left standing for the pipeline routes and the mineral rights.

After all, it was "Pipelineistan" which got us into this quagmire, courtesy of the Bush Administration, so many years ago. As reported at centurion2.wordpress.com in 2009:

Despite over 15 years of support, the government in Kabul currently controls only 63% of the country. It is likely to lose control of more territory with serious advances by Taliban forces in the last year [PDF]. The government has been rife with corruption primarily related to stealing U.S. development funds and facilitating heroin smuggling. Afghanistan remains the world capital for opium production, and is even hitting new highs.

None of these problems are new. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s own brother was allegedly one of the biggest heroin dealers in the country. And the Taliban have never really been under threat of being outright defeated, so much as temporarily setback.

Large-scale corruption persists, with Afghanistan third from the bottom in international rankings, ahead of only Somalia and North Korea. Adjusted for inflation, American spending to reconstruct Afghanistan now exceeds the total expended to rebuild all of Western Europe under the Marshall Plan; yet to have any hope of surviving, the Afghan government will for the foreseeable future remain almost completely dependent on outside support.

And things are getting worse. Although the United States has invested $70 billion in rebuilding Afghan security forces, only 63 percent of the country’s districts are under government control, with significant territory lost to the Taliban over the past year. Though the United States has spent $8.5 billion to battle narcotics in Afghanistan, opium production there has reached an all-time high.

For this, over the past 15 years, nearly 2,400 American soldiers have died, and 20,000 more have been wounded.

We are now moving rapidly into stage II of Levantine Madness as the US boosts its intervention in the war-torn Mideast.

Five thousand US troops are back in Iraq to bolster the shattered nation’s puppet regime that is propped up by American bayonets. New Iraqi military formations have been formed, totally equipped with modern US M1 Abrams tanks, Humvees, and fleets of trucks. More US forces are on the way.

As if this witch’s brew was not sufficiently toxic, US and Russian aircraft and Special Forces are brushing up against one another in Syria. At the same time, the US Navy in the nearby Persian Gulf is provoking the Iranians to please President Donald Trump who seems determined to have war with Iran.

The US Navy is now threatening to impose a naval blockade on war-torn Yemen, another joint US-Saudi warfare enterprise that has gone terribly wrong.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I am deeply concerned about the lousy quality of counsel, and information, President Trump is getting regarding the US military presence in the Middle East, and Afghanistan, and how things in the countries in which we are fighting are getting worse, and not better at all.

IF the leadership of both NATO and and the US government had a shred of sense regarding Afghanistan, they would have their troops exit this country as quickly as was safe, and negotiate with whatever government remained standing in Kabul for the pipeline routes, and the rights to the amazing level of mineral deposits Afghanistan possesses.

This is while the US was supposed to have completed its pullout from Afghanistan by now, though this was repeatedly pushed back during the Obama administration’s waning years, and ultimately halted. All indications from Pentagon figures since are that they envision troop levels growing from this point – for a never-ending war and occupation. It’s a humiliating attempt to save a dying empire in a region increasingly hostile to its colonial policies and plans:

The US-led invasion was a catastrophe from day one. US airstrikes have killed many civilians already - though the Pentagon denies that. The new surge seems to be aiming for these sorts of targets again - as the CENTCOM claims “the Taliban are all hiding in these areas.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Five years ago, globalresearch.ca featured the following story on Socotra:

The Yemeni archipelago of Socotra in the Indian Ocean is located some 80 kilometres off the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometres South of the Yemeni coastline. The islands of Socotra are a wildlife reserve recognized by (UNESCO), as a World Natural Heritage Site.

Socotra is at the crossroads of the strategic naval waterways of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (See map below). It is of crucial importance to the US military.

There is mounting evidence that Chinese ground troops are operating inside Afghanistan, conducting joint counter-terror patrols with Afghan forces along a 50-mile stretch of their shared border and fueling speculation that Beijing is preparing to play a significantly greater role in the country's security once the U.S. and NATO leave.

The full scope of China's involvement remains unclear, and the Pentagon is unwilling to discuss it. “We know that they are there, that they are present,” a Pentagon spokesman said. Yet beyond a subtle acknowledgement, U.S. military officials in Washington and in Kabul would not respond to several detailed questions submitted by Military Times.

This dynamic stands in stark contrast to the two sides' feisty rhetoric over their ongoing dispute in the South China Sea, and to Washington's vocal condemnation of Russian and Iranian activity in Afghanistan. One explanation may be that this quiet arrangement is mutually beneficial.

Webmaster's Commentary:

With a restive Western Muslim population in Xingiang, the Chinese government doesn't want to see anything remotely looking like outside elements of jihad making it through that 50 mile border with Afghanistan.

So from the Chinese governmental perspective, what they are doing in Afghanistan is perfectly logical.

There is utterly no military metric by which the US and NATO occupation of Afghanistan can be judged as a "success"; rather, these last 16 years have been serial failures, with never enough troops to overwhelm and terminate the Taliban; and now, elements of jihad are sparking new conflicts, and placing even more strain on this occupation.

IF the American government and NATO high command had one shred of horse-sense between them, they would pull all their troops as quickly as was safe, and negotiate with whatever government was left standing in Kabul regarding the pipeline rights and mineral rights; of course, those actions....would be logical.

And please remember the deep history of this sordid war against Afghanistan; the Bush administration was negotiating with the Taliban over the oil pipeline routes, but told the Taliban that their fees were "too high", as reported here:

So this was a war over oil pipeline routes and mineral wealth; the late Karl Marx had some very frivolous things to say, but when he made the observation that all wars are, by their very nature, economic, he was bang spot-on.

The Obama administration bought Mi-17s for the Afghan air force where they played a vital role in providing ground support in combat operations and in carrying supplies. However, in 2014 the US government imposed economic sanctions on Russia.

"The Ukraine crisis impacted Afghanistan in a major way," Qayoumi stated on Friday. "After the Ukraine crisis we could not use US funds to acquire any spare parts and that caused a major crisis in air power for Afghanistan."

RENO, Nev. One of the world's largest marijuana festivals, which is expected to be held this week on tribal land outside of Las Vegas, has been facing a possible shutdown for the past two weeks, according to a letter sent by federal officials earlier this month.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden, based in Las Vegas, sent a Feb. 16 letter to the Moapa Paiute Tribe reminding the tribe that the transport, possession, use and distribution of marijuana is illegal under federal law. The marijuana trade show and festival, planned for March 4 and 5, would be in violation of that law, according to the letter obtained by the Reno Gazette-Journal.

During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on February 28, Senator Paul pointed out that we've been in Iraq for over ten years, we've wasted trillions of dollars, we're broke, and it simply can't continue.

If you had asked Americans about Afghanistan before 1979, it’s a reasonable bet that most of us wouldn’t have known much about that country or even been able to locate it on a map. Perhaps only to the “freaks” of that era, in search of a superb hashish high, would its name have rung a special bell.

America’s war in Afghanistan is now in its 16th year, the longest foreign war in our history. The phrase “no end in sight” barely covers the situation. Prospects of victory — if victory is defined as eliminating that country as a haven for Islamist terrorists while creating a representative government in Kabul — are arguably more tenuous today than at any point since the US military invaded in 2001 and routed the Taliban.

The legacy of death and misery from the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan continues today, and, once again, Dick Cheney plays a central role. A new book by Joseph Hickman, a former U.S. Marine and Army sergeant, titled The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers, details how soldiers and local civilian populations were exposed to constant streams of toxic smoke from the burning of waste.

The infamous Kellog, Brown, and Root (KBR), which was a part of Dick Cheney’s corporate empire under Halliburton, operated about 250 burn pits which contributed to the $40 billion that Halliburton made during the Iraq occupation. “Every type of waste imaginable” was burned, including “tires, lithium batteries, asbestos insulation, pesticide containers, Styrofoam, metals, paints, plastic, medical waste and even human corpses.”

This reprehensible practice proves yet again that nothing is sacred when it comes to the military machine.

Webmaster's Commentary:

For politicians like Cheney, it's all about the money, period, end of discussion; and for these folks, it's "profits uber alles."

To get to their "safe space", in terms of preventing any moral reflections whatsoever about what they have done, these people have their consciences surgically removed before running for office. That means that they feel utterly zero remorse about the evils they have done; money gets made, and that is all that matters, and damn the physical and emotional costs to the people who get hurt in the process.

In fact, one of the most astonishing things about Cheney's heart transplant, to many people, was that he actually had one in the first place.

If ever there was a personification of corporate evil incarnate, it is Dick Cheney; history will not look kindly upon his tenure as Vice-President, for all the death and destruction which occurred, both domestically and internationally, under his watch.

The House Armed Services Committee’s chairman this week voiced support for increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, adding he isn’t worried about a slow slide into another major military mission there.

Webmaster's Commentary:

And if you believe THAT one, I have some of Saddam's nuclear weapons to sell you!

“The reason so many are fleeing places such as Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq is that U.S. and European interventionist foreign policy has left these countries destabilized with no hopes of economic recovery,”explainedformer congressman and three-time presidential contender Ron Paul, a leading voice for a constitutional, non-interventionist U.S. foreign policy. “This mass migration from the Middle East and beyond is a direct result of the neocon foreign policy of regime change, invasion, and pushing ‘democracy’ at the barrel of a gun.”

“Contrary to what one might expect, U.S. military aid doesn’t produce willing, cooperative, or effective security partners. Instead, it incentivizes bad behavior and drives the sources of terrorism: corruption, violence, and poor governance. Unwittingly, this policy is creating its own enemies,” writes Jeremy Ravinsky.

The U.S. government’s multi-billion-dollar effort to counter narcotics in Afghanistan is a humiliating failure that’s resulted in a huge increase in poppy cultivation and opium production. Despite the free-flow of American tax dollars to combat the crisis, opium production rose 43% in the Islamic nation, to an estimated 4,800 tons, and approximately 201,000 hectares of land are under poppy cultivation, representing a 10% increase in one year alone.

Webmaster's Commentary:

It is not a failure. You were only told the money was to suppress opium growing, but the opposite is true. If you go back to Bo Gritz' "A Nation Betrayed" you will hear the story of the money the US spent in Vietnam to counter opium, but the money was actually used to build a paved road up the the front of Khun Sa's opium plantation, to speed deliveries back to Air America and thence to the United States!

You have probably heard the phrase, "The French Connection", both a book and a movie. The "French Connection" preceded the US' involvement in Vietnam when the French were on control and French Intelligence had the opium pipeline.

The US installed puppet is not happy. I'll bet Senator John McCain is not happy. But, what would make you happy? If you had to choose between fresh water for Michigan, or 5 more years of a never ending occupation of Afghanistan, what would you choose?

Ghost soldiers are a phenomenon in which Afghan military commanders fill their ranks with fictional names and just keep the salaries, which since the salaries are paid pretty much exclusively by NATO and overwhelmingly by the US, has been a known tactic that the Afghan government has done nothing to prevent.

The commander of the American-led international military force in Afghanistan, warning that the United States and its NATO allies are facing a “stalemate,” told Congress on Thursday that he needed a few thousand additional troops to more effectively train and advise Afghan soldiers.

“We have a shortfall of a few thousand,” Gen. John W. Nicholson said in a sober assessment of America’s longest war to the Senate Armed Services Committee .

The international force that is helping the Afghans currently has 13,300 troops, 8,400 of whom are American.

Afghan forces have taken heavy casualties over the last year as they have sought to hold off the Taliban and prevent them from capturing provincial capitals.

Webmaster's Commentary:

A memo to General Wilkerson and President Trump: gentlemen, how long has the US government and NATO "occupied" Afghanistan?!?

15 years and counting.

And by what military metric, please, has this occupation been a "success"?!?

Absolutely none.

So I, and the rest of the American people have to ask; what is the real reason to continue this occupation, which shows utterly no signs of resolving in the favor of the US and NATO?!?

Absolutely none.

Afghanistan is not called "the graveyard of empires" for no good reason; the Brits found that out; so did the Russians; and now, the Americans and NATO are discovering that for themselves, and very uncomfortably, I might add.

"Magical thinking", coupled with a pathological inability to see any scenario through to its logical conclusion, is the absolute death-knell for any intelligent foreign policy, and gentlemen, we are there, right the heck now, in this ham-fisted, pig-headed occupation of Afghanistan, which was doomed to failure from the start.

So, what is to be done?!?

The US and NATO should be evacuating their troops from this country as rapidly as is safely possible, and then the US and NATO should be negotiating with whatever government is left standing in Kabul for the pipeline rights (which is originally what this was all about), plus access to Afghanistan's embarrassment of natural resources.

Of course, all of this...would be logical.

President Bush's administration, plus elements at UNOCAL attempted to negotiate with the Taliban before 9/11, but thought the prices quoted were "too high", threatened an invasion, and suddenly, "out of no where", 9/11 happened as the "excuse" for an invasion of Afghanistan.

The American military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, a Military Times investigation has revealed. The enormous data gap raises serious doubts about transparency in reported progress against the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban, and calls into question the accuracy of other Defense Department disclosures documenting everything from costs to casualty counts.

The U.S. government's main watchdog organization in Afghanistan released its quarterly report to Congress this week, and it contained a shocking statistic: The government of Afghanistan has uncontested control over only 57 percent of its territory as of last November. That is down from 72 percent a year earlier.

Webmaster's Commentary:

A memo to the Trump Administration; there is utterly no military metric by which this US/NATO occupation can be adjudged a "success", unless you want to call the explosion in opium poppy production, funding various US alphabet soup agencies off-the-shelf actions to which Congress is not privy, a "success"

The images are all to real here; and no, this is not some made-up footage.

Bush's administration attempted to negotiate the pipeline deals with the Taliban but failed to get a deal to its liking, which resulted in the war against it; I would like to hope President Trump's administration could do far better:

An intelligent, logical administration, 15 years on, would withdraw US and NATO troops as quickly as safely possible, then negotiate with whatever government was left standing in Kabul for the pipeline routes, and the embarrassment of mineral riches Afghanistan possesses.

But as I said, those would be the actions of an intelligent and logical administration.

These Refugee/Immigration Executive Orders appear to be knee-jerk, fear-based, and xenophobic acts of reflexive anger and emotional “lashing out,” rather than well-thought out policy and heavily researched executive action.

The last few Executive Orders pertaining to Refugees and Immigration appear to not have been very well thought through, and the etiology/genesis of the refugee crisis and immigration issues were either completely ignored, or Trump and his administration don’t understand it very well.

The Obama Administration has made a habit of dramatically underreporting civilian deaths in its assorted military operations around the world, but took things to a whole new level in what will presumably be their last such document, claiming only one civilian killed all year in US drone strikes “worldwide.”

The report, which Obama requires by executive order, nominally for the sake of transparency, claims a massive decrease from the number of civilians killed the year prior in drone strikes, and managed to achieve this by deliberately excluding the overwhelming majority of the US drone strikes carried out in 2016 from the report’s definition of “worldwide.” Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are not counted.

In early November incident in the northern Kunduz Province of Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of 33 Afghan civilians, a Pentagon military investigation concluded in a new report issued today. The troops ordered airstrikes against the village of Boz, and the bombings killed large numbers of civilians within.

The report was quick to shrug off the civilian casualties, insisting that the troops “acted in self defense,” and that they are clearing the troops of any wrongdoing for calling in airstrikes against civilian homes within a village, presenting it as an appropriate response.

The investigation centered its justification on claims that Taliban forces had fired on troops, and might well have been within any given house in the village, concluding that bombing all the houses was the “minimum force required” to neutralize “various threats” they might conceivably be under.

Webmaster's Commentary:

So now, slaughter and assassination of innocent non-combatants is defined by the US military as "self defense"?!?!?

This very much reminds me of the response of the Papal legate, during the Catholic Church's genocide against the French Cathars.

When apprised that there were women and children with the men at Mont Segeur, he responded: "Kill them all: God will find his own."

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko is once again warning about the long-standing problems of corruption in Afghanistan, and the amount of US “reconstruction aid” disappearing down black holes over the course of the years. As always, the discussion came around to “ghost soldiers.”

More than a thousand people protested last Saturday in Frankfurt against the German government’s deportation of refugees to Afghanistan. After a rally at the central Opernplatz square, a growing number of people joined the peaceful demonstration in the downtown area.

A British aid worker who was killed by a grenade in Afghanistan during a botched rescue attempt by US special forces was actually working secretly for MI6, according to investigators at the Intercept website.

Linda Norgrove was captured by Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan in September 2010 while she was working for the US contractor agency Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI).

Improved relations between Russia and the United States will be good for peace and stability in Afghanistan, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai said. He added that he was supportive of "Donald Trump’s stand for improved relations with Russia." "Good for peace and stability in Afghanistan and the world," he said on Twitter. On Saturday, US President-elect Donald Trump said on Twitter that "having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing." According to Trump, "only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We have enough problems around the world without yet another one."

Just two days after announcing that US Marines are being sent back into Afghanistan’s Helmand Province to try to slow the losses the Afghan military is suffering at the hands of the Taliban there, NATO has now also announced that ground troops, led by Italian forces, will be heading into the Farah Province to try to shore up defenses there as well.

The new “advise and assist” mission is smaller, involving about 200 NATO troops, and officials say that their advisory role makes it comparatively unlikely they will enter direct combat. This is in stark contrast with the Marines in Helmand, who despite being officially “non-combat” are in areas where direct combat is virtually assured.

NATO tried to pass this off as a temporary measure, but as the second in a few days it reflects that NATO claims that their involvement in the ground war ended years ago simply weren’t true, and that the Afghan government is still far from self-sufficient.

Webmaster's Commentary:

If the US government and NATO had one brain cell between them which was, in the least bit, rational, they would leave Afghanistan as quickly as it was safe to do so, declare "victory" (which would be hysterical, save for all the blood and money lost) and negotiate with whatever government was left standing for rights to pipeline routes, and its mineral wealth.

But of course, such a strategy would be .....logical.

Unfortunately, apparently, logic, the US government, and NATO are only very loosely aligned, if at all.

There is utterly no military metric by which the invasion - and occupation - of Afghanistan can be measured as a "success", period, end of discussion.

The only "success story" one can point to, if in fact one is a member of the various "alphabet soup" US spook apparatchiks, is the reality that the production of opium poppies has soared under US and NATO occupation.

Just two days after announcing that US Marines are being sent back into Afghanistan’s Helmand Province to try to slow the losses the Afghan military is suffering at the hands of the Taliban there, NATO has now also announced that ground troops, led by Italian forces, will be heading into the Farah Province to try to shore up defenses there as well.

The new “advise and assist” mission is smaller, involving about 200 NATO troops, and officials say that their advisory role makes it comparatively unlikely they will enter direct combat. This is in stark contrast with the Marines in Helmand, who despite being officially “non-combat” are in areas where direct combat is virtually assured.

NATO tried to pass this off as a temporary measure, but as the second in a few days it reflects that NATO claims that their involvement in the ground war ended years ago simply weren’t true, and that the Afghan government is still far from self-sufficient.

Webmaster's Commentary:

If the US government and NATO had one brain cell between them which was, in the least bit, rational, they would leave Afghanistan as quickly as it was safe to do so, declare "victory" (which would be hysterical, save for all the blood and money lost) and negotiate with whatever government was left standing for rights to pipeline routes, and its mineral wealth.

But of course, such a strategy would be .....logical.

Unfortunately, apparently, logic, the US government, and NATO are only very loosely aligned, if at all.

There is utterly no military metric by which the invasion - and occupation - of Afghanistan can be measured as a "success", period, end of discussion.

The only "success story" one can point to, if in fact one is a member of the various "alphabet soup" US spook apparatchiks, is the reality that the production of opium poppies has soared under US and NATO occupation.

The US Marine Corps may send troops back to Afghanistan as advisers, two years after leaving the country as combatants. 2nd Marine Division Commander Maj. Gen. John Love said recently that a group from his unit would deploy to Afghanistan in the spring.

The US government and NATO have been occupying Afghanistan for over 15 years.

There is still no military metric by which the US, or NATO military can call that occupation "successful",in light of the fact that the Taliban and ISIS are having some great successes in various areas of the country.

Britain’s border security has come under scrutiny after a Syrian refugee revealed how he entered the UK on a fake passport, and a convicted Afghan murderer who beheaded a woman got into the country, only to assault two police officers days later.

Occasionally a New York Times writer like Mark Landler will be permitted to step up to the plate and write a sensible article about President “No Guts Obama” and how he caved in to folks whom he lacked the political courage to cross.

2016 has been a fantastic year for Russia. Putin’s policy of slow, low-key and deliberate move and counter-move has proven to be extremely effective.

Just like European maps place Europe in the center of the planet, so do most western commentators look at the past year from a US/Europe-centered perspective. Which is fair enough. Furthermore, the AngloZionist Empire has just suffered two major disasters, the Brexit and the election of Trump.

The credit for the election of Donald Trump goes first and foremost to the American people to whom I sincerely believe the entire planet owe a heartfelt and loud “THANK YOU!!!!!”.

Not only did the British people defy the Empire and vote for a Brexit, but now the Imperial Homeland has “backstabbed” them by electing a patriot who is not interested in maintaining the global empire (or so he says, at least for the time being).

Not for the first time, the contrast in character between Putin and Obama was illustrated in the latest diplomatic spat over alleged Russian hacking.

For one thing, Putin’s gracious magnanimity always in the face of American provocations shows the Russian leader to be a fine statesman and human being; whereas Obama looks like a pathetic, cheap nonentity.

President Putin made a surprise attack:

He said that his government would not take retaliatory measures. Indeed, he went further by offering seasonal goodwill greetings to President Obama, his family and the people of America, as well as repeating invitations to the children of accredited US diplomats in Russia to festivities being held at the Kremlin.

Until Trump relegates 'the neocons' to the ideological backwaters, Russia and China had best hold on to their strategic alliance.

Kissinger, an old cold warrior, is working to use Trump’s commitment to better relations with Russia in order to separate Russia from its strategic alliance with China.

China’s military buildup is a response to US provocations against China and US claims to the South China Sea as an area of US national interests. China does not intend to attack the US and certainly not Russia.

The 2008 casino capitalism-provoked financial crisis, plus the American “resolve” to remake the so-called Greater Middle East through wars of choice, regime change and covert ops miserably failed.

As we wait for the dawn of the Trump era – an almost intergalactic geopolitical question mark – what’s certain is that the War Party US deep state won’t admit defeat. And the key geopolitical riddle to be answered is how strident internal American tensions will deal with the hub of progressive Eurasia integration: Russia, China and Iran.

Russia, China and Pakistan warned on Tuesday that the influence of Islamic State (IS) was growing in Afghanistan and that the security situation there was deteriorating.

Representatives from the three countries, meeting in Moscow, also agreed to invite the Afghan government to such talks in the future, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"(The three countries) expressed particular concern about the rising activity in the country of extremist groups including the Afghan branch of IS," ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters after the meeting.

The United States, which still has nearly 10,000 troops in Afghanistan more than 15 years after the Islamist Taliban were toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces, was not invited to the Moscow talks.

The gathering, the third in a series of consultations between Russia, China and Pakistan that has so far excluded Kabul, is likely to deepen worries in Washington that it is being sidelined in negotiations over Afghanistan's future.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The US government has not been invited to these talks, because in 15 years of US/NATO occupation, the only thing that the US/NATO Consortium seems to have been able to control is the production of opium poppies, and that business has been going great guns.

But when it comes to ever-increasing violence, the US and NATO are completely impotent to stop the problem; it is no bloody wonder that China, Pakistan, and Russia believe that if there is a solution to the violence here, they will have to work together in concert with the Afghani government to find it.

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